Internet Watch

by Alicia Sindlinger

Volpe Center Library Celebrates 40 Years With Facelift

The Volpe Center Technical Library and Information
Center supports staff at the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems
Center and others engaged in transportation research. Over the past four
decades, the library has helped transportation professionals address major
national and international issues related to safety, security, environment,
mobility, and economic growth and trade. In 2010, to celebrate 40 years
supporting the transportation industry, the library received major enhancements
— onsite and online.

At a celebration in October 2010, the library officially
opened its doors at its new location in the main building on the Volpe Center
campus in Cambridge, MA. The new location is more convenient for most users
than the previous facility in another building, and the space is more
accommodating for group gatherings. In addition to the physical space, the
library launched an updated Web site. The new site, available at www.volpe.dot.gov/library, also aims to make library resources more accessible.

"Our goal with the new and improved library — both the new
space and new Web site — is to have more people use the facility and
resources," says Volpe Center librarian Susan Dresley, who has worked at the
library since 1980. "We're now better positioned to serve as a
knowledge-sharing hub for transportation professionals."

Using the Library

The Volpe Center library has an extensive collection of
more than 27,000 books and technical reports, 180 professional and general
interest journals, and 250,000 microfiche titles. The collection covers all
aspects of transportation, as well as computer science, economics, engineering,
environment, management, psychology, public policy, and statistics. Also
included in the collection are reports and publications by other transportation
agencies and associations, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal
Highway Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and
Transportation Research Board.

The library is staffed by a professional information
specialist skilled in data storage, retrieval techniques, and research methods.
The specialist can help to identify documents, conduct literature searches,
locate materials on interlibrary loan, and keep track of transportation-related
Web sites and publications available on the Internet. The librarian also
provides additional services, such as project-specific support, to Volpe Center
staff.

To further support
knowledge-sharing efforts, Volpe Center recently established a partnership with
the Research and Innovative Technology Administration's National Transportation
Library (NTL). The partnership will make the Volpe Center's catalog holdings
available through the library's catalog and full-text versions of Volpe
Center's publications accessible at http://ntl.bts.gov.

Improving Web Site Functionality

The library's online presence is essential for providing
transportation researchers across the country with access to the library's
resources. The Web site serves as a starting point for research and self-serve
access to materials. The primary goal of the updated site design was to make
all Volpe Center publications easily accessible to the research community.
Accordingly, the new home page prominently displays a publication search box
with which users can search by author, keyword, title, and date range.

The database search is the site's most used function.
However, before the update, some of the content in the database, particularly
for older Volpe Center reports, was sparse and lacked URLs, keywords, and abstracts.
Library staff worked to enhance the database by adding keywords and abstracts.
The library is planning additional enhancements to digitize older reports and
make them available online. Currently there are more than 4,200 records in the
database.

In addition to the database search, visitors to the site will
notice several other new features and functions on the home page. A spotlight
feature box displays new or recently added publications. The spotlight, which
is connected to a popular Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, is updated
approximately every 10 days. New navigational links also appear in three
graphics below the search and spotlight boxes. The links provide access to the
site's other key areas: "About the Library," "Resources," and "Frequently Asked
Questions."

"The site enhancements — visually and functionally — help
to facilitate the information-gathering process," says Dresley. "Researchers
and others looking for transportation resources now have a much improved tool
at their fingertips."